Hmm, this is frightening enough to make one frustrated:
Today's college grads declared "40% less empathetic" in a University of Michigan study.If true (and it's always good to critique the methodology of a study with results this drastic), this is a serious dilemma. Sometimes the only thing standing between community harmony and a full-blown Holocaust is empathy. Someone in the comments calls empathy "the key building block of civilization," and I couldn't agree more. What the heck is happening to us?
Also of great interest to me is how quickly people in the comments honed in on the role economics might have played in this trend:
I seriously think a portion of this "lack of empathy" may be due to the state of the economy. I'm in college and I can tell you most students know about the grim nature of the job market. Around 70% of college students today are living paycheck to paycheck. A lot of parents don't have the financial means of helping their kids through college, something previous generations have been able to benefit from. We're more competitive out of necessity. We're competing against older people with more work experience for low level jobs that would have normally been available to us. So despite my "lack of empathy," I can understand the circumstances other people are facing.
and
...its [sic] not that younger generations don't recognize the suffering other people might be going through, they're just too busy trying not to suffer themselves. Sure you can give your starving neighbor your last loaf of bread, but when your own starving children ask whats for dinner, will you still be able to hold your head up high at the thought of helping a friend?
I can see a compelling rationale here, and it's something we can probably all relate to, to such an extent that I feel I'd just be beating a dead horse by commenting on it further. But then, we also have this curiosity:
I think it's the *absence* of real hardship that's the root of the problem...You can be destitute or moments away from death and still care about the well-being of others.
I'll say I did an interesting thing during the Obama Campaign: I directed a recent college grad to the appropriate place to apply for a job with the campaign, sacrificing him as a volunteer in the process -- and if you're familiar with campaign work you know just how
stupid that kind of move was on my part, from the perspective of pure self interest. I'm not sure I would have done it had I not been in the shoes of a jobless college grad myself for awhile. Perhaps the Great Recession is going to produce a great renaissance of empathy?
Wouldn't count on it. I doubt any single cultural factor could have produced the survey results. It was certainly the case that immense suffering in Germany during the 1920s didn't prevent a Holocaust in the following decades.
So, what's most frightening about the study to me, is, we've got this lack of empathy and
we don't know where the hell it's coming from. It's difficult to point a finger at one factor and address the problem effectively.
